Kitchen Tactics
by comeonlight
Summary: Seven takes on the challenge of preparing Sice's favorite food, but the task turns out to be more complicated than she thought. Nothing necessarily romantic to categorize it as Romance (not much humor either) but 67 is kinda implied sooo might as well just put the pairing there...Fluff (sorta I guess), Sice with a knife (for cooking purposes of course), & the ever-thoughtful Seven.


_**A/N:**__ A response (which was written in like less than 2 hours) to a wonderful prompt I got in my inbox~ though that doesn't mean this will necessarily be wonderful. Do I get points for effort? And oh look, 1000 words or less._

Belly of the Behemoth. That's what the dish was called, anyway. Seven had never even tasted it before, let alone prepared it all on her own, but it didn't seem too complicated from what she'd read. The hardest part was probably just getting the meat. Behemoths weren't exactly easy to take down, and they cost a fortune on the market. Seven had caught a lucky break, though. A group of underclassmen coming back from training had brought a behemoth with them, more to show off than anything else, but then they noticed Seven staring at their prize. They offered to give her the behemoth in exchange for three tutoring sessions during the next week. It wasn't a bad deal, really. It sure beat hundreds of thousands of gil.

_So this is Sice's favorite food_, Seven thought, once again skimming an open page of the cookbook she'd checked out from the library. Sice had mentioned craving the dish a few times, but Seven hadn't expected the opportunity to prepare it to actually arise. Not so soon, anyway. In any case, she had about an hour before Sice would be back from…whatever it was she was doing. All she'd said was that she was going out and would be back by suppertime.

Following the instructions, Seven chopped the behemoth's breast into multiple blocks and let the meat simmer in a pot. She began to slice a few of the other ingredients, but stopped when she heard a low gurgle. "Maybe I should turn the heat down…" She adjusted the knob on the stove and checked the meat. She decided that it looked alright and went back to her other duty. Once the first three ingredients to be added to the pot – two peppers and a carrot – were sliced to her liking, Seven added them to the pot carefully. Some steam rose and she backed away from the stove. The gurgling sound returned, louder. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea…

Pushing her doubts aside, Seven began to add spices and sauces to the concoction. A pleasant aroma resulted from that, and she thought for a moment that maybe she was getting the hang of this – and then the contents of the pot went flying all over the kitchen. For a brief moment, Seven was thankful that no one was around to hear her high-pitched yelp. She looked around at the sauce splattered on the counters and walls and sighed, then quickly turned off the stove before any more explosions occurred.

"Woah! What went on in here?" Sice's voice startled Seven, who let her head drop in shame. "…I tried to make you Belly of the Behemoth." Almost immediately, Sice burst out into laughter. "Is that it? You act like it's the end of the world! Wow, Seven, you're a riot!" Seven stared in puzzlement as Sice continued to crack up.

"What exactly is so funny?" Seven finally asked. Sice stopped laughing but continued to wear a huge smirk. "This isn't a beginner dish. There's a certain order you have to follow. And when you don't, well…" She held back another laugh. Seven sighed and looked once again at the mess she'd made. "Sorry…"

Sice took out another pot. "Don't say sorry yet. Looks like we still have enough here to make enough for an army. Though I'd still probably eat it all." She reached into a drawer and drew her favorite knife, then began to slice up some more of the behemoth meat. "Now, like the book says," she explained as Seven watched. "You want to put the meat in first and bring it to a simmer. In this case, you can get away with about two cups of water." Seven took that as a cue to measure out two cups of water and add it to the pot. "Alright, good," Sice said. "Now this is what the book doesn't tell you: you need to add the rest of the ingredients in colored order, save for the sauce." She guided Seven's hands to grab two bottles of sauce. "Now just pour some of each into there…yeah, like that." Seven put the bottles down and gazed in amazement at how quickly Sice was cutting up the remainder of the ingredients.

"Red first," Sice said, adding a diced red pepper to the pot, followed by a couple of apple slices. "Then yellow." She added a yellow pepper, some corn, and the contents of a chocobo egg. "Green." A few different varieties of greens were added to the pot. "And if you'd do the honors of putting some of those forest berries in there, I'll add the spices and stir it up." Slightly hesitant, Seven poured the berries she'd picked the day before into the pot. "Perfect," Sice said, flashing Seven a smile before adding a handful of spices and stirring the mixture. She put the lid on the pot and increased the stove temperature slightly. "It'll start making weird noises in a couple of minutes, and that's how we know it's ready."

"Wow, Sice," Seven said. "You really have a talent for this stuff." Sice licked a spot of sauce from Seven's cheek. "Sorry. Too tempting. You know, talent is just pursued interest." Seven smiled at that. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Seven had just begun to clean when the pot on the stove began to gurgle. "Dinner time!" Sice said, turning off the stove. "We can clean up later. Seven, you want rice with yours? Hey…why are you smiling like that?" Seven grabbed a plate. "It's just that you're so excited. You look really happy, that's all." Sice matched her smile.

"Hey Seven, let's cook together again. Soon."

"…Yeah. It'll be fun."


End file.
